site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2902 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 19, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

How so? Doing MMA, getting ripped and wearing a chain might be orthogonal to what Zuckerberg is known for but 180?

He is also the biggest driving force behind open source AI right now. His latest model is nearly at the level of the closed-source alternatives. Requires hella hardware to run but still. That is the polar opposite of what I heard about Zuckerberg over the last 10 years: monitoring, stealing and selling personal information, etc.

The stealing/selling of information was never what got him in trouble -- early Facebook was literally giving it away for free, borderline open-sourcing it. Pretty libertarian in an 'information wants to be free' way, but I think they just did it because they figured their graph was really neat and wanted to share.

AFAICT there weren't really negative consequences either, apart from the Trump team using the features as intended -- to create a graph of potential Trump supporters to target political ads at receptive individuals, building an effective campaign with big bang for relatively few bucks. (ie. what the Obama campaign did on the last go-round)

You might not like it, but this is what peak (advertising) performance looks like -- now they do the same thing but keep it all under the hood.

Sure, but he was always politically a libertarian. He lobbied against banning Holocaust denial on Facebook until it became politically untenable for example because he believes in freedom of speech. I don’t think he’s very political, that means both that he’s not a lib and that he’s not going to sacrifice huge money for conservative causes like Elon. Plus he’s a Jewish guy with half-Asian kids so that likely sets an upper bound on how rightist he might go.

Huh, that's the first I'm hearing of Zuckerberg being libertarian. I guess I was successfully brainwashed in the past.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats